A highly evocative story set in Liverpool of the 1960’s. An exploration of what it was to be like to be young in the time and city of The Beatles. The joys of music and football in a golden age. At the start of the 1960’s Liverpool is an ordinary, northern city. Badly damaged by German bombs and still struggling to shake off the fall-out from the war. Tony and his teenage friends look at their dull, grey lives and dream of something better. Even their beloved football team, Liverpool FC, seem to be stuck in Division Two and going nowhere. Then The Beatles and Bill Shankly come along. And everything goes crazy. The city is the focus of world attention. And it isn’t just the music. Liverpool start to dominate English football, becoming one of the very best teams in Europe. Tony and his friends watch The Beatles, who they first saw playing at small local venues like The Casbah and Litherland Town Hall, go on to achieve worldwide fame. It is an astonishing time to be young and living in Liverpool. Tony writes songs and falls in love with a girl living in Penny Lane. He and his friends join the swaying crowd on the Kop at Anfield to watch Bill Shankly’s team and sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. The future looks bright. But life can be cruel. Nothing lasts forever. We all, in the end, have to grow up.
Cunard Yanks were British men, mostly young, who worked on Cunard ships from the 1940s to the early 1960s on the transatlantic routes, mainly between Liverpool and New York. American consumer goods, fashions and music which they brought to Liverpool gave the city a special awareness of popular American culture. New York is their second home at a time when few British people go there. They see Buddy Holly play at the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem and watch Pee Wee Marquette introduce Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie at Birdland. They visit Jack Dempsey’s Bar and shake the great man’s hand. And catch the A-line to Coney Island before watching Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. American clothes and records, and gifts of stockings and perfume, are a hit with the girls back home, while American music inspires groups like the Beatles who play at the Cavern and the Casbah, as well as at the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg, before finally presenting their Merseybeat version of rock ‘n’ roll to the world.
Duncan Ferguson. David Moyes. Paul McCartney. A father and a son. A passion for Everton. A passion for The Beatles. Blues & Beatles is the story of football and music across the generations. The story of how a young boy inherited those fascinations from his father - and would one day pass them on to his own son. And it's the story of how he met his heroes along the way. From legendary footballers to a 20th Century icon: one of the Fab Four. Blues & Beatles is a football story and a music story. But above all else, it's a story shared by father and son.
This book tackles issues of globalization in the English Premier League and unpicks what this means to fan groups around the world, drawing upon a range of sociological theories to tell the story of the local and global repertoires of action emanating from the popular protests at Liverpool and Manchester United football clubs.
“Probably the best novel ever written about sport.” —The Times (UK) He was a real-life, working-class hero known as the “British Muhammad Ali”—because he had a big mouth and wasn’t afraid to use it. But Brian Clough wasn’t a boxer, he was a soccer coach, known for taking backwater teams and making them into champions. In towns where people had little else, the hard-drinking and scrappy Clough was a hero. He was especially beloved for telling it like it was on behalf of small-town teams everywhere—calling out the stars who played dirty, rival coaches he suspected of bribing referees, and the league that let them get away with it. And then one day Clough was offered a job coaching the big-city team he’d called the dirtiest—the perennial powerhouse Leeds United. The Damned Utd tells the story of the legendary Clough’s tumultuous forty-four days trying to turn around a corrupt institution without being corrupted himself—the players who wouldn’t play, the management that looked the other way, the wife and friends who stood by him as he fought to do the right thing. The inspiring story behind the movie of the same name, The Damned Utd has been called by The Times of London, “The best novel ever written about sport.”
For many, the Beatles offered a delightful alternative to the dull and the staid, while for others, the mop-top haircuts, the unsettling music, and the hysterical girls that greeted the British imports wherever they went were a symbol of unwelcome social and cultural change. This opposition to the group—more widespread and deeper rooted in Chicago than in any other major American city—increased as the decade wore on, especially when the Beatles adopted more extreme countercultural values. At the center of this book is a cast of characters engulfed by the whirlwind of Beatlemania, including the unyielding figure of Mayor Richard J. Daley who deemed the Beatles a threat to the well-being of his city; the Chicago Tribune editor who first warned the nation about the Beatle menace; George Harrison’s sister, Louise, who became a regular presence on Chicago radio; the socialist revolutionary who staged all of the Beatles’ concerts in the city and used much of the profits from the shows to fund left-wing causes; the African-American girl who braved an intimidating environment to see the Beatles in concert; a fan club founder who disbelievingly found herself occupying a room opposite her heroes when they stayed at her father’s hotel; the University of Chicago medical student who spent his summer vacation playing in a group that opened for the Beatles’ on their last tour; and the suburban record store owner who opened a teen club modeled on the Cavern in Liverpool that hosted some of the biggest bands in the world. Drawing on historical and contemporary accounts, Joy and Fear brings to life the frenzied excitement of Beatlemania in 1960s Chicago, while also illustrating the deep-seated hostility from the establishment toward the Beatles.
Alan Levy is a college student who, in the fall of 1960, spends a semester abroad in Hamburg, Germany. There, he has the misfortune to rent a room next door to an up-and-coming rock and roll band from the North of England. They call themselves the Beatles.They are loud, rambunctious, and high-spirited. They are wildly unconventional (at least compared to Alan's Ivy League polish) and play horrible, jarring music at all hours of the night. They are friends, however, with a young woman with whom Alan has fallen hopelessly in love--a beautiful German photographer named Astrid. The Boys Next Door is a bittersweet love story and a tall tale; a fast-paced, comic what-if, and a true fantasy fulfillment for Beatle fans everywhere. It's a loving evocation of a time when rock and roll was new and dangerous, and when the lads from Liverpool were taking their first baby steps toward conquering the world.
"An utterly satisfying examination of the business of popular music." —Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic There’s a reason today’s ubiquitous pop hits are so hard to ignore—they’re designed that way. The Song Machine goes behind the scenes to offer an insider’s look at the global hit factories manufacturing the songs that have everyone hooked. Full of vivid, unexpected characters—alongside industry heavy-hitters like Katy Perry, Rihanna, Max Martin, and Ester Dean—this fascinating journey into the strange world of pop music reveals how a new approach to crafting smash hits is transforming marketing, technology, and even listeners’ brains. You’ll never think about music the same way again. A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book
In the 1960s, Liverpool had the biggest country and western scene in Europe. Country music was part of the fabric of Liverpool; as ingrained as the Irish influence and a bowl of Scouse. Country music influenced every group. Follow the story of one of the top groups: Phil Brady and the Ranchers. When John Lennon started his group, The Quarrymen, their musical influences were skiffle (which has its roots in country music), country and western and rock 'n' roll (which has country roots too). Their musical heroes had their roots in country music and shaped The Beatles sound. ● Why were Liverpool lads obsessed with cowboys? ● Which Beatles album did John call their "Country and Western Album"? ● How many country-influenced songs did they record, both during and after The Beatles? The roots of the beat music scene of the 1960s began with Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line", which was issued in 1956, beginning the skiffle craze. However, examining the skiffle music scene shows that the roots of skiffle were in country; the roots of John Lennon's Quarrymen were in country and western, which was reflected in the songs of The Beatles. Liverpool groups were playing a mixture of country, rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, rockabilly and whatever else it discovered. Groups had to decide which route to take. However country music wasn't completely new to Liverpool because of skiffle. Hank Walters formed his first group around 1947, while still at school. There was a country scene in Liverpool in the 1940s, when Liverpool sailors brought records back from America. They brought jazz, country, R & B and everything else that was for sale in the record stores of New York and Boston. When radio brought those American hits to the ears of British people, another music revolution was taking place. Liverpool, the last Western frontier of England, would find it had more in common with Nashville than London. So in 1962, Phil Brady decided to act on the influence of country music in his life and start his first band, going on to become the #1 country artist in Britain, receiving an award from Roy Orbison at the first British Country Music Awards. Phil, from the Dingle, met and toured with some of the biggest names in country music, like Slim Whitman, Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, Hank Snow and, when he visited Nashville in 1968, met up with Chet Atkins and George Hamilton IV, and spent the day at Willie Nelson's ranch. He recorded several albums and singles, including the very first 45rpm single for the new Cavern Sound Ltd. Phil had a fan club, run by Frank Nash, who saved many of his photos, flyers and newspaper cuttings, which are reproduced here for an insight into the musical career of one of Britain's greatest ever country music stars. Yes, some of the photos are blurred, crooked and low quality, but that makes them even more authentic and special.
